David Hewson - The Lizard's Bite

There was a question there, one Teresa didn’t feel able to answer at that moment.

“Once I’ve lost that burden from my conscience,” Raffaella continued, “I’m gone.”

Teresa groaned, pulled up a chair by the bed, and took her hands. “Listen, please. What happened wasn’t your fault. What—”

“I was the one Bracci was threatening! If I hadn’t been stupid enough to let him get hold of me—”

“Then he would have grabbed hold of someone else. And Leo and Nic and Gianni would have done exactly what they did. Don’t fool yourself. They’d have done it for anyone.”

Raffaella stared at the still figure beneath the single white sheet. “He will recover, won’t he? That friend of yours seemed optimistic.”

She couldn’t lie. “There’s a chance. There’s a chance he won’t. The brain’s a curious organ. Pino knows more about it than anyone I’ve ever met. All the same . . .”

Raffaella Arcangelo leaned forward, earnest, suddenly intense, less in control of herself than at any time Teresa had witnessed. “He will recover. I know it. And if there’s any justice in this world, someone will pay for all this bloodshed too.”

Teresa Lupo blinked, trying to take all this in. She’d assumed Raffaella shared the opinion of the world at large. That Aldo Bracci, a man found with Bella’s keys in his pocket, a man once accused of sleeping with his own sister, was responsible for the two deaths in the fornace, and had met a deserved fate. There’d even been a letter in the local paper, La Nuova, suggesting Commissario Randazzo deserved a promotion, not suspension, for putting Bracci down like an animal that night.

Raffaella gently removed Teresa’s hand from hers. “I’m not a fool,” she said. “I know why you’re asking for these things. Leo confided in me. If he could speak now, he’d confirm that. I know why you’re looking at Bella’s belongings. You’re not part of any official police investigation. You want the man who really did this to Leo. I want the man who did this to Leo and to my brother. And to poor Bella.” The dark, earnest eyes gazed at her, pleading. “I tried to help Leo,” Raffaella continued. “And I failed. I won’t fail again. I promise. I owe him that.”

“This is not . . .” Teresa’s thoughts were on Silvio Di Capua, who’d called in sick at the morgue in Rome, flown to Venice the night before, and was now organising some private lab arrangements with a handful of specialist companies, places that could handle the material she needed to send them. “ . . . a conversation we should be having, Raffaella. There are risks.”

“What risks? They can fire you. And your police friends. What can they do to me?”

Teresa thought about some of the background material Nic and Gianni had managed to extract from the Questura’s computers before getting thrown out. There were more than mere careers at stake. Hugo Massiter had all the makings of a big-time political animal. If he’d been Italian, he could have got himself a seat in Parliament and looked very comfortable there. Massiter had connections, real criminal connections. And not with the old Italian guard either. The Englishman favoured the new Mafia, men from the Balkans who rarely felt bound by old-fashioned codes of honour.

“Tell me what you require,” Raffaella insisted. “I don’t need to know the details.”

It was, Teresa thought, worth a shot. And it would drag Raffaella away from this quiet, bright room, where the air conditioning still didn’t keep out the salty tang of the lagoon and the horns of the passing traffic. That would be a result in itself. The woman needed to remind herself there was a living world beyond these four white walls.

“Someone else was on the island that night,” Teresa said. “Not Aldo Bracci. Someone who had a reason to speak to Bella, we think. Someone . . .”

It was difficult to decide how far to go. She trusted this woman. She just didn’t want to get her involved too deeply. It would be wrong, too, to put ideas into her head. Although they’d done that for themselves. Perhaps her objections were ridiculous.

“I can’t say any more,” she admitted apologetically. “If you could look again, that would help. Anything unusual. Anything at all . . .”

Raffaella nodded. “Of course.”

Teresa glanced at the still figure in the bed, wishing he’d do something. Cough. Snore. Any damn thing.

“He will recover,” Raffaella declared. “I know it.”

“I’m sure you’re right.”

A thought occurred to her. “Did Bracci say anything that night? When he had hold of you?”

“Just drunken nonsense. I didn’t understand any of it.”

Nonsense took on an importance of its own when it came from a man with a gun.

“What kind of thing?”

The dark eyes gazed at her, sad, resolute. “I can’t be sure but I thought he said, just once, ‘Where’s the Englishman?’ There were several Englishmen there that night. Massiter. Some of his lawyers. Some of the city’s art people. It probably doesn’t mean a thing.”

“Probably.”

How many Englishmen did Aldo Bracci know? Teresa wondered. Bracci didn’t move in art and legal circles. It had to be Massiter surely, not that a half-heard comment sounded much like evidence to her.

She took Raffaella’s hands again and asked, “This is just a wild guess, but do you think it’s possible Hugo Massiter and Bella were having an affair?”

“No!” A sudden smile broke Raffaella’s face. “That’s ridiculous!”

“Why? He looks like a ladies’ man to me.”

“Bella! Bella? ” Raffaella looked aghast at the idea. “I mean this as no disrespect to her, but I think a man like him would set his sights a little higher. If the gossip’s right, he doesn’t sleep with the poor. I don’t think he needs to, does he?”

“You never saw any sign of it? He had that apartment next door.”

She waved away the notion with a firm hand. “During the day only. Michele insists on that. And Bella never went near the place. There are workmen around constantly. A man like Massiter would show some discretion, surely.”

“Then somewhere else? He’s got this boat, hasn’t he?”

“So they say. I still . . . it feels wrong .”

Teresa glanced at the unconscious Leo Falcone. “He always has some smart comment for these situations. Something that sends you back to look at what you had and try to see it in a new light. It rarely works. But then it doesn’t need to that often.”

Raffaella was struggling to come up with something. This was, Teresa’s instincts told her, a bad way to extract information from people.

“She left the island quite a lot during the day,” Raffaella suggested. “I assumed she was visiting friends. Or shopping. Bella never seemed short of a little money recently for some reason.”

“Then she could have visited his boat?”

“I suppose so.” She looked doubtful. “I’m sorry. This is all a little beyond me. Perhaps you’re right. Is that what an affair would be like? Fitting in a few minutes in bed during the occasional afternoon? It seems so feeble. So sad . But then I’m not an expert. Relationships . . .”

“Join the club,” Teresa agreed, when the other woman failed to continue. “Love is a mystery to me too.”

“But I thought you’d found it?”

Raffaella had seen her and Peroni several times in the hospital. Perhaps it showed.

“I think I have. I just don’t know how I got there.”

Raffaella Arcangelo nodded.

Teresa liked this woman. A lot. That was all the more reason to get her away from Leo’s bedside.

“L’amore è cieco,” Raffaella said softly, beautifully.